Let me tell you a little bit about my photographic background.

I started taking photographs nearly 45 years ago at around the age of 9 and almost immediately was the proud owner of a very cheap (7s 6d I think) plastic 35mm camera from Woolworths.  Photography had always been prevalent in my family - my Grandfather on my mother's side had been a professional photographer (sadly I don't really remember him, he died when I was six or seven) and my Mum's brother - my Uncle Jack, was a very early user of colour film.  My Dad too was throughout his life a keen photographer and had taken up 35mm photography (with the same type of Woolworth's camera) shortly before I did.

When I first had a camera, colour film and colour processing were much more expensive than black and white, but I really didn't "get" black and white at the time, so I became a very sparing photographer.

My first digital camera was a Canon Powershot 350 bought in August 1997.  My second digital was a Kyocera Finecam S5, a 50th birthday present in July 2003.